Under Private Skies
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Route 66. During the episode Even Stones Have Eyes, Tod visits Buz at the Texas Lions Camp to see how he's adjusting to blindness. Not a long fic, but my first attempt at a Route 66 story.
1. Chapter 1

"For those who love

live under private skies

where stars have mouths

and even stones have eyes." From _Even Stones Have Eyes._

1.

Buz had spent more days than he cared to count in darkness. He had never seen this place that he was now living in. Never seen the faces of the people who taught him and helped him and sheltered him. Never seen the trees that he heard shimmering in the wind or the buildings he used everyday.

The last thing he remembered seeing was a flash of the sky filling his vision, and the sun up there, dazzling his eyes. That was it. He didn't remember being hit and he didn't remember falling, although Tod had told him that he had fallen and had grabbed onto a girder and had slipped out of consciousness only when he was being hauled up out of that empty lift shaft. If he had been knocked out instantly he would have been dead.

May as well be dead… That thought still slipped through his mind sometimes, in the morning when he opened his eyes to a dark that was identical to the night before, when he tripped or knocked his shins on unexpected obstacles, when he tried and _tried_ at some task and just couldn't do it. The fear and the anger and frustration cascaded through him sometimes when he was least expecting it. The only thing that really took his mind away from it all were those times with Celia when he let himself feel the blood racing through his veins and the physicality of his body, and her words and touch erased the darkness around him.

That, and talking to Tod. He spoke to him often – perhaps too often. He didn't know. He always felt brightened by hearing Tod's voice on the other end of the telephone. He closed his eyes and sat on the padded chair by the phone and tilted his head back and listened and talked and listened again. Tod told him about everything he had been doing, the places he had travelled to, the girls he had seen. He had promised not to stick around on account of Buz, but he had. He travelled, but he always stayed close.

But last night had been different.

'Hey, buddy,' Tod had said through the receiver. 'Are you free tomorrow? I can be in the neighbourhood, and I'd like to see you, see how you're getting on. How about it, tiger?'

Buz had smiled and thought and then said, 'Yeah, I'm free. It's Saturday tomorrow, isn't it? I'm free all day.'

And that had been that.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''

Buz sat in a chair near the door of the Administration Building with his hands about the crooked handle of his cane, waiting for Tod to arrive. Tod had said eleven, and the clock had struck just a few minutes ago, but he couldn't hear the car yet. He rubbed his hand over his wrist where his watch still sat, ticking but useless. He needed to get one like Celia's, one where he could open the front and feel the hands. It drove him crazy not being able to tell the time.

He stood up and paced a little, confident in his surroundings. He wondered what the time was now and if he should go ask one of the secretaries in the office. They were always glad to help. But he didn't go. He just walked up and down a little more, listening to his own footsteps and the way they echoed against hard walls, feeling the heat of sun magnified by glass as he passed the window and feeling it fade away again as he walked back toward the door.

He couldn't work out quite why he was so nervous, but he knew that seeing Tod would be strange. It was not that this place was a prison – far from it – but he hadn't seen anyone in the past few weeks who was not from the Lions Camp, who wasn't part of that elite social clique made up of the blind and those used to working with the blind. He hadn't been face to face with Tod since that awkward goodbye when he had first come to this place.

The horn from outside was a sudden sound, jolting him back into awareness. He had been so lost in himself that he hadn't even heard the engine or the soft sound of wheels on the road. He was in no doubt that it was Tod, though – not just that the sound had been the Corvette's horn, but that it had been sounded just as Tod would sound it.

He went to the door, standing for a moment on the sill, his ear cocked toward the road. Just as he caught the creak of the seat Tod called out, 'Hey, buddy!'

A sudden feeling of warmth surged over him. Speaking to Tod on the phone wasn't the same as seeing him in person. It had been too long.

Buz lifted his hand in greeting and began to make his way down the path. Instantly there was a scramble. The car door opened and slammed and he heard Tod running toward him.

'Hey, wait, let me – '

He held up his hand again as Tod reached him at a jog. 'They teach us these things here, you know,' he said, tapping the cane on the ground. 'I'm all right. I know the path and I know where you're parked.'

'All right,' Tod said. Buz could feel the moment of awkwardness before Tod decided to clap a hand to his friend's arm. 'It's good to see you, tiger. How're you making out?'

'Oh, fine,' Buz said.

He wasn't sure what else to say. He could say that sometimes he lay awake at nights with his eyes wide open and the urge to cry swelling in his throat. He could say that he was learning to decipher the textured world of Braille and he could navigate most of the more familiar paths here. He could say that he was still afraid of what would happen to his life now, afraid of leaving the safety of this place, afraid of clinging to it for too long. He could list the things that he missed so hard it felt like a knife pushing into his chest, or list the sounds and smells and tactile sensations that he had slowly learnt to appreciate. He could say he felt like he was walking on the moon, but he wasn't sure if Tod would understand.

The cane warned him of the change from path to grass and then the slight kerb before the drive. The car was only a few steps on from there. The cane clattered into it first and he pulled back, afraid of scratching the paint. He reached out his hand instead and found the hood, still warm under his palm. Tod moved beside him like his shadow, so close he might as well be touching him.

He slipped his hand along to the handle and opened the door and dropped himself into the firm seat, casting the cane into the opposite footwell.

'Er, Buz – ' Tod began as he lifted his hands to the steering wheel.

'Relax, buddy. I'm not gonna drive it. I just want to _feel_ it,' he said, resting his feet onto the pedals and feeling the slight give in them.

He brushed his hand past the ignition and the keys jangled against his skin. He turned them and felt the engine roar into life.

'_Buz_,' Tod said, more panic in his voice now.

'I'm not gonna drive it, Tod,' Buz assured him. 'I don't want to crash and burn, believe me.'

Tod didn't answer. Buz thought of that moment in their rooms just after coming back from the hospital, when all he had been able to think of was destroying his useless shell of a body, and Tod had pressed that razorblade into his hand. He hadn't known what to think then, but he had known he didn't want to die. He had wanted to hurt and to cry and to scream and to do anything to distract himself from the fact that his eyes didn't – _wouldn't_ – work, but he had known that he didn't want to die.

'I just want to feel it, okay,' he repeated. 'That's all.'

'Okay,' Tod said softly, trusting him enough to just stay beside the car while Buz sat there.

Buz inhaled the scent of exhaust that was building, and the subtle scent of the warm seats. He let his fingers trace over the curve of the steering wheel, feeling the vibration that pushed through the circle of metal. He dropped his hand through and touched the glass of the dials, the hard trim, the slight roughness of the vinyl and the smooth polish of paint.

'I never realised it _felt_ so much,' he said. 'I never knew the hundred different feelings that could slip under your fingers, you know? All those sensations this baby's made of. I just saw a big fibreglass shell with an engine in it.'

'Well, how about you slip over and I see how this big fibreglass shell drives?' Tod asked acerbically. Buz could hear the anxiety laced through his voice. He was still worrying that Buz was going to slip the car into gear and let her go.

Buz turned off the ignition and pushed across the car into his old seat. The contours fit him better there. The seat had moulded itself to his shape. Tod always drove this bird more than he did and the seats knew it. The driver's seat wouldn't get a chance to adapt to him any more now because he would never get to drive this car again, or any car.

'Forward, Commodore,' he said, dropping into a polished English accent to cover the frustrated feelings that were beginning to start in his chest. He pulled the cane out of the footwell and gestured ahead with it as if it were a staff. 'We'll see what those tricky blighters in the village think of great-box-on-wheels-that-roars-like-tiger.'

Tod laughed. He started up the engine again and the car purred forward. Buz closed his eyes, leaning back into the seat and letting the wind start to touch at his hair. He had missed that feeling.

'So, where are we heading, Lieutenant?' Tod asked finally, mimicking Buz's uppercrust accent.

The car swung in a wide curve. Buz could hear traffic now – they must have turned onto the highway.

'I'm afraid I haven't carried out a preliminary sortie, Commodore,' he said. 'It's your call, sir.'

'I passed a good looking diner on the way in,' Tod said, dropping back into his normal accent. 'I'll stand you to lunch.'

'Sure,' Buz said, suddenly feeling awkward.

He had a small amount of money in his pocket – bills and coins that he had worked hard to be able to identify. The coins weren't too hard, but the bills were all the same size and he had to have someone else identify them and then fold them in different ways to tell them apart. But it was only a little money. He didn't get much of a pension to live on. He had never felt so poor and so unable to do anything about it.

'Look, Tod,' he said abruptly. 'Have you thought any more what you're going to do once my training's over? I mean, I've told you what you need to do, but – '

'Drop you like yesterday's paper and move on?' Tod asked. 'Yeah, you've told me that. What would _you_ do, Buz? You'd stick by me – not from a misplaced sense of guilt or loyalty, not from pity. You'd stick by me because you're my buddy and we take care of each other. I don't care if you carry that cane or have twenty-twenty vision. We stick together. Whether that means carrying on travelling round or putting down roots somewhere, we'll do what it takes. You always wanted a mailbox with your name on it, anyway.'

'I didn't see it happening just yet,' Buz said quietly. 'Not like this, not with letters I can't read, posted by a mailman I can't see.'

'Yeah.' There was a brief pause, and then he felt Tod's hand on his arm, warm and lingering for a moment. 'You know, Buz, if I could do _anything_,' he began.

'You'd give me one of your eyes,' Buz nodded. 'Yeah, I know.'

He put his hand out into the slipstream, let the air catch in his palm and buffet his hand backwards. It was a powerful feeling, pushing through the air like this, moving at speed. He didn't want to give up travelling from place to place with Tod, even if he couldn't see the new places they came to. He wanted to smell the different plants, the changing soil and dust, feel the southern sun on his face and the cold touch of a northern snowstorm. He thought of snowflakes melting on his cheek, and smiled. Celia would like that, he thought.

'You gotta learn to dig what you can see without your eyes,' he said reflectively. 'I mean, I can see the wind hitting the car – I mean really _see_ it, just by listening. All those curves and ribbons of air. And the wind in the top of the trees. Birds you'd never see because they're hiding in the leaves. Tod, have you ever closed your eyes and really _felt_ and _listened_?'

'I can't say I have,' Tod said doubtfully.

'You think I'm saying all that to prove I'm all right,' Buz said. He rested back in the seat, moved his palm over the smooth curve of the handle of his cane. 'I'm not all right, Tod. I hate it. I hate _this_,' he said, lifting the cane and tapping it back down against the floor of the car. 'I hate all the things I can't do any more. I hate the darkness that's in front of me every way I turn. But I'm doing what I can about it. I'm working hard. Celia's showing me – '

He broke off self-consciously, and Tod repeated, '_Celia's_ showing me? Celia. She's that cute thing that came out with you when I first brought you here, isn't she? You spoke about her on the phone.'

'I wouldn't know if she's a cute thing,' Buz said. He was thinking of the feeling of her features under his fingers, sharp and delicate like a bird. He remembered kissing her for the first time on the steps of the amphitheatre, and that strange melting feeling that had washed over him. He had cried afterwards, and he hadn't known why.

'She's a cute thing,' Tod said firmly. 'Trust me.'

'I always trust you, buddy,' Buz said, but he was thinking of the feeling of Celia's mouth under his and the odd confusion that had overcome him. He didn't know what to think or what to do about that. There was something in him that was urging him to let himself fall deep and hard. Perhaps it was a way of reasserting his masculinity, the wounded tiger stalking close to his females. Perhaps it was a need to reach out to _someone_ who understood in some way how he felt, someone who could reassure him that it would be all right, that his life was not over. Perhaps it was the need for someone to look after him, to hold his arm and guide him, or the need for him to feel that he could still protect and provide. He didn't know what to think.

He threw his head back and breathed out hard. He wanted to stand up in his seat and let the wind catch him full in the face, not be protected by a glass windshield. Tod would think he was mad – but Tod probably already thought he was a little crazy.

'I want to catch the wind, see,' he said, as if he had said all those things aloud to Tod. 'I want to feel free.'

'You want to feel free, huh?' Tod echoed. He was silent for a moment, then he said, 'Hold tight.'

'Hold tight?'

But he heard the surge in engine noise as he asked the question, and felt the sudden push backwards as the Corvette accelerated.

'How fast's this baby going?' he asked as the speed levelled out. He could almost feel the scenery screaming by – the dull whush of trees and walls and openness coming and going like waves.

'I reserve the right not to answer that question,' Tod replied. He was shouting now, the blustering of the wind against the car threatening to steal his words. 'It's a good, straight, empty road for the next three miles.'

Buz grinned. And then he stood up, pressing his hands hard over the top of the windshield and letting the wind stream against his skin. He opened his mouth and let the air billow in, let it hit his wide-open eyes in tear-provoking blows. He shook his head and felt the fingers of air push channels through his hair. He shouted with all the force of his lungs and the air streamed over his clenched fists and into his sleeves and up his arms and about his body like caressing hands.

'Are you _crazy?_' Tod's voice cracked in the wind, his hand grabbed at Buz's jacket, the speed of the car dropping rapidly. 'Buz, are you crazy? I mean – '

'I've done that before,' Buz said as he dropped back into his seat. His hands were stinging and his face was stinging and his eyes were streaming with tears. 'Do you remember outside of Reno, that night when it looked like the stars were almost touching the earth and you got this thing up to a hundred nearly and I thought I could catch the sky in my hands?'

'I know, but you're – ' Tod cut himself off before he could say the word _blind_, but Buz could hear it there, lingering on his tongue.

'Tod, I was drunk as a skid row bum that night,' Buz reminded him. 'I thought I could fly. And you didn't worry about me falling out of the car then.'

'Well, I was pretty far gone too that night,' Tod admitted. 'I shouldn't even have been driving. If I'd been a bit less drunk I would have thought I was too drunk to drive.'

'Yeah, those were fun times,' Buz said.

He smiled, but the smile stayed too long on his face, fixed as if it had been forgotten. He felt that curious emptiness that usually came after laughing long and hard at a joke, when the laughter stopped and you couldn't remember what was funny any more. This felt like an echo of something that had passed away – sitting here in the car, speeding along an open road. It felt like something he had left behind long ago.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

The town was a series of noises and sensations that Buz had never truly noticed before. Sure he had heard the swell of music or voices from a radio in a gas station or the chatter of folks in the street – but he had never _noticed_ all the little things. How strongly the gas stank when Tod stopped to fill up. The softer smell of asphalt that had started to warm as midday approached. The little noises of the attendant's feet shuffling on the gravel-dusted ground and the nozzle clattering against the car, and the sharp difference between a woman's voice just inside the building and a woman's voice on the radio nearby.

He sat self-consciously stroking his fingers over the handle of his cane, wondering if it were obvious that he was blind. He felt like an animal poised to run, but he couldn't run because running anywhere but on the track with a guide meant tripping and finding himself face down on the ground somewhere with his palms stinging and his pride in tatters. Anyway, the feeling was stupid, because there was nothing to run from but himself.

He imagined telling that to Celia. She would tell him it was natural. He could hear her voice. _You're a man, Buz. Something's been taken away from you and you're scared. We're all scared at first. You'll learn not to be._ Somewhere else in his mind, overlaying Celia's voice, he heard Blessed Blakesley talking in her quiet, self-effacing way, asking him why he felt that way, asking him what he thought he could do to feel differently. He had bridled at first at the counselling, but Blessed had been true to her name, easing him through this dark time like a guide leading him through a labyrinth.

The clink of coins brought him back to himself. Tod was paying the attendant and the intensity of the gas smell had died away. They drove on briefly and then stopped again and Tod said, 'Okay, buddy. Final stop. We have reached our destination.'

Buz sat silent for a moment, listening to the noises of the street around him and trying to visualise where he was. He had been so looking forward to this chance to get away from the Camp and encounter the real world again, but now he just felt strange, vulnerable and awkward.

'Hey, where's our tiger?' Tod asked, knocking his arm.

Buz smiled. Sometimes Tod spoke to him with the tone of a parent, or perhaps an older brother. He always had – and Buz couldn't quite resist that little taste of what it might be to have a family.

'I'm here,' he murmured, feeling for the door catch and listening out for cars. 'Is this the sidewalk side I'm on?'

'Yeah, it is. Wait a minute,' Tod said. The seat creaked and the car door slammed, and Buz could hear Tod's footsteps on the hard road as he hurried round to the other side. 'Now, it's not much of a step down – '

Buz was already feeling with the cane, finding the edge of the sidewalk just a few inches away from the side of the car. He got out and slammed the door shut and turned to Tod.

'I – er – I'll need your help now,' he said. He felt so damned awkward asking Tod for help, oddly more than asking it of a stranger. The people at the Camp had spoken about getting a Seeing Eye dog, and maybe they were right. He had always liked dogs, anyway.

'Just tell me what I need to do,' Tod said.

'Let me take your arm,' Buz said, reaching out and finding the thick knit sleeve of Tod's cardigan. 'Just – er – try not to let me fall down any manholes, okay?'

Tod laughed, and even though Buz could hear that he was awkward too, the laughter helped a little.

'No manholes – I promise.'

'Tod, do you think a dog would fit in the Corvette?' Buz asked as Tod led him across the sidewalk.

'''''''''''''''

'…so I told Sylvie I'd meet her outside the public library, and there was Georgie outside the town hall, both of them expecting me to take them to Del's for cocktails, and I walked across the square in full view of them both – ' Tod broke off suddenly. 'Hey.' He clicked his fingers sharply. 'Are you even listening?'

Buz blinked and nodded, and then shook his head. 'Yeah. I mean, no. I'm sorry, bud. I guess my mind's not on it.'

He had been listening to the clinking of plates and the chatter of customers up at the counter, the hiss of the coffee boiling and the noises that drifted through from the kitchen of burgers sizzling and metal clashing on metal and people shouting out orders. The air was thick with the smell of meat and cigarette smoke and coffee. He felt as if he were drowning in those sounds and smells and he didn't know if he liked it or not.

'Ah, it's okay,' Tod said. He was too understanding at the moment. 'It wasn't such a funny story anyway. Not after they met in the middle of the square and ended up going to Del's without me. There I was left at home with a cold beer and take out food.'

Buz reached out and touched the smooth edge of his plate with his fingers, then felt across the table for his coffee. This all felt too awkward. He didn't know how to recapture the ease there had been between him and Tod.

'I guess next time you should save one of them for me,' he said. 'Selfishness will get you nowhere.'

'Aren't you tied up with this Celia, this girl at the Camp?' Tod asked, sounding relieved at Buz's attempt at normality.

Buz turned his coffee cup in his hands, feeling the heat through the smooth ceramic. He could tell how full it was by where the hotness tapered off into something cooler.

'Well, I'm not tied up, exactly,' he said.

He felt as if he were bound hand and foot and around his heart, but he couldn't work out why or how that had happened, and he couldn't tell Tod that, here in the middle of a diner full of people. He didn't even want to tell himself that.

'She's a nice girl,' he said. 'We share something, you know. We both feel it. She's teaching me how to dig the sounds of the world. I'm trying to teach her something about music – you know, Nelson Riddle and Artie Shaw and all that jazz. She'd never even heard of Thelonius Monk.' He laughed. 'I don't know I can afford the tutoring fees, buying all those records and junk.'

'If you're teaching her about jazz you must be tied up,' Tod told him. 'Who was the last person you tried to indoctrinate into the Buz School of Classic Jazz – apart from me, of course?'

'You remember Anna, don't you? Back in Cleveland?' Buz asked defensively, jerking his head up. 'I bought records for her. That didn't mean I was tied up with her. I felt sorry for her, you know. She was so trapped…'

'Yeah,' Tod said.

Buz knew the meaning of the silence that fell like a sudden fog. They had both felt so sorry for her, unable to speak, trapped in that house like Cinderella with no way of answering back and nothing to lift her out of her silence but that one record that she was allowed to listen to for one hour a day. No one knew what had happened to Anna… Buz liked to think of her out in a city somewhere, listening to records all the day, learning to living in a world where even if she couldn't speak back, she was still noticed and appreciated.

He cast about for the sugar bowl and Tod pushed it until it touched his fingers.

'Stressed, huh?' Tod asked as Buz plucked lump after lump of sugar and dropped them into his coffee.

Buz had never really noticed that slight fizz of noise before that was released as the sugar hit the hot liquid. He lifted his head and smiled, shrugging slightly. Tod knew him. He knew him well enough to know he had been looking for the sugar, and that he only filled his coffee that full with it when he was strung out.

'Maybe a little,' Buz said, thinking how that was the understatement of the year.

'Want a cigarette?' Tod asked, and the packet rustled as he began to slip it out of his pocket.

Buz shook his head. Sure, he smoked sometimes, but drugs made him uneasy, even the relatively soft impact of cigarettes on his psyche. He hated to rely on them. He hated to smoke because he _needed_ to or drink to blot out the world. He had seen too often what too much alcohol or too many drugs did to a guy.

He dropped another cube of sugar into his coffee instead and stirred it slowly.

'What's the meaning of all this, Tod?' he asked suddenly. 'I mean, sitting here in this place, eating burgers and drinking coffee like we're on a rest stop, travelling from A to – to Q or somewhere. I'm travelling nowhere. This is a day release from jail. This is a picnic by the side of a stagnant creek. The river's flowing on and all the merry folks are waving from the paddle steamer, and you're going to step back into the current and flow away, and I'm – I'm – '

'You're in school, Buz,' Tod reminded him. 'I know institutionalised education is a foreign concept to a rough and ready street brawler like you, but that's what happens when you go to school. You stay in one place for a while and just learn. This place is like Yale for the blind. That's all.'

Buz smiled, knowing that the needling was a deliberate attempt to cheer him up. He could feel the darkness about to break through into full despair, and he needed to stop it. People would think he was a nut if he started weeping here in this diner.

'Yale for the blind, huh?' he asked. He took a sip of his coffee and let the hot sweetness sink through his mouth. The sugar seemed to light up his mind. 'How do you make eggs, Yale-style?'

'You get them made for you,' Tod said, and through his voice Buz felt like he could see the laughing smile transforming his face, making those freckles dance like patches of sunlight through trees. Damn, he wanted to _see._ He missed Tod's lopsided smile and the glint he got in his eyes when he made a joke.

'Well, maybe when I've finished here I can be your chef,' he said. 'I'm getting pretty good. You won't be able to insult my cooking any more.'

'Seriously, Buz?' Tod asked with real enthusiasm. 'I mean, you always enjoyed cooking, even if you weren't exactly – well – I wouldn't have hired you for the Waldorf Astoria. But that's great if you're making a skill of it.'

'Well, I'm not going to be working in lumber yards or foundries any more,' Buz shrugged. 'But I can flip hamburgers with the rest of them. Something to pay my own way, you know?'

'We can do it, Buz,' Tod said earnestly, leaning forward across the table. 'You and me, just like before. We can travel around, job to job. Maybe we'll stay a little longer each time, let you get used to the place, but we can do it.'

'Yeah,' Buz said. He drained the rest of his coffee, finding a mixture of half-dissolved sugar and the bitty hardness of escaped coffee grounds at the bottom. 'Yeah, maybe we can do it.'

The thought scared him. He didn't want to say that, but the thought of finding himself in a new town every few weeks scared him as much as it excited him. He had grown used to his room at the Camp, to knowing precisely where everything was kept, to being able to walk about there without worrying what might be in his way. He had grown to know the grounds in a strangely intimate way – the curves of each path and where the steps were, the feeling of different doors and how they opened, the echoing noises of each different space. It took time to get used to a place without seeing it – time that moving on every few weeks wouldn't allow him. And then there was the getting of jobs. He knew how he would have looked at a blind man asking for work in a busy kitchen, or asking for work anywhere.

'Hey,' Tod said, and his hand touched Buz's forearm, firm and reassuring. 'I haven't got my head in the stars, you know. I know it's going to be hard. I mean, I've got no idea what you're going through, really. But you know I'll be there, buddy. I'll see you through okay. And it won't be a burden or a drag. It'll be a pleasure. It's no more than you'd do for me.'

'Yeah, I know,' Buz said slowly. He couldn't remember if he'd finished his burger. He picked up his fork, moving it lightly around the plate to check it was empty. 'I know,' he repeated. 'Believe me, I appreciate it, buddy. I really do. It's just hard to see the future, you know.'

'I know,' Tod said. He stood up and came around the table, clapping his hand to Buz's arm. 'Come on. Let's go. I'm finished too.'

Buz stood and picked up his coat. Even though the year was moving on there was still a chill in the air outside. He swung the coat around to push his arms into the sleeves – and as he did he knocked against someone, there was a clattering splash of a cup dropping and a yell of annoyance and a hand shoved against him, sending him stumbling against the table.

'Hey, watch out! Are you blind?'

Buz pushed his arms into his coat and did up the button, then turned to face the angry man. Some kind of hot embarrassment mixed with anger was pouring over him. He wanted so badly to hit out and knock that man to the ground.

'Yes, I am,' he said in a level, furious voice, his hands balling at his sides. 'But I could still take you on if you want to step outside for a minute.'

'Hey, Buz,' Tod said immediately, his hand descending on Buz's arm again. 'Come on.'

'I'm sorry, fella,' the other man stuttered, all of his anger suddenly washed away by his own embarrassment. 'I didn't realise. It was only a cup of coffee. No big deal.'

Buz rose up on his toes, his shoulders stiff with tension, squaring on to the guy's voice. 'So you were all ready to push me around until you found out, huh? What's so different now? Come on.'

'Now, look, fella – '

'Buz, come _on_,' Tod said, grabbing him by the arms and hustling him out of the diner into the fresh air of the street. 'Don't be a prize idiot. Why would you even want to fight that guy? I mean, besides that he's built like a bull, besides the fact you can't see to dodge punches or land punches.'

'Okay, okay,' he muttered, pulling himself away from Tod's grasp and then realising that he was stood on the sidewalk, the noise of cars off to his right, people moving past him with slack footfalls and the murmur of voices. He wanted to run. He felt like a wound spring and he wanted to run, pushing all those people away, until he found a back alley somewhere where he could crouch down against a wall and heave breath in and out until he felt calm again. He had done that too many times to count, growing up.

He turned back, pulling in breath, trying to steady himself. He flexed his empty hands and then realised what was missing.

'Do you have the cane?' he asked, and he was surprised at how level his voice was.

'Yeah, here it is,' Tod said, putting it into his hand.

'Thanks.'

Buz took it and tapped the end to the ground, listening to the subtle sound of echoes from the sharp noise. He couldn't interpret them properly. His ears seemed to be ringing from anger and embarrassment. He could hear his own heart beating, his blood pushing through his veins.

'Come on,' Tod said, taking Buz's free hand firmly and putting it to his arm. 'Let's walk.'


	3. Chapter 3

3.

It was some time before Buz realised that he was shaking. He walked, one hand on Tod's arm, the other sweeping the cane before him to reassure himself of what was before him, to give him some level of autonomy without Tod having to give him verbal warnings every few minutes. But there was something trapped inside him, some kind of pent up anger or fear, that was making his hands shake as if he were freezing.

He had wanted to hit that man. He had wanted to really lamp into him, to get him on the ground, to pummel his fists into him over and over until he had fallen still. He didn't think it would have mattered if it had been that man or any other man, perhaps even Tod lying in the dust under the hail of fists. He just wanted to _hit_ and hit and hit until whatever it was inside him had been driven out. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps it was himself that he wanted to hit, to push out the churning unknown of fear and anxiety and frustration and anger that had set up home in his body.

'Where are we?' he asked eventually, turning his head to hear sounds bounded by buildings and a ringing noise of hammering somewhere over the street.

'Uh – second and Smithson,' Tod said after a moment. 'Walking up Second Street.'

Buz shook his head. 'That doesn't mean anything. I mean _where are we?_ What's the lie of the land?'

'Oh, it's low-rise buildings mostly,' Tod told him. 'A couple of stores. There's a garage just over the road. I was taking the long way back to the car. I thought you needed it.'

'Maybe I do,' he said. He clenched his hand on the cane, trying to push out the feeling that he was about to explode. He stopped walking abruptly. 'This was a mistake, Tod,' he said. 'I'm – I'm not ready to come out like this. I've gotten used to all the places around the Camp. This is – it's like unknown territory. A big, wide map with _unexplored_ stamped all over it. _Here be dragons._ All that jazz. Sure, the dragons are just automobiles and guys with hot coffee, but – I'm not ready for it.'

'You want me drive you back to the Camp?' Tod offered immediately. 'I mean, I'd like to spend more time with you if that's okay. I don't need to be back until – well, I don't actually need to be back until eight o'clock Monday morning. But there's no need for us to be wandering around town like vagrants.'

'Yeah, I'd like that,' Buz smiled, aware that his smile was thin and tight. Since when had getting lunch and coffee in a diner been such a big thing? But it felt big. It felt enormous. He felt like he was exploring Mars, walking through these streets with his eyes wide open and darkness all around him, with people's voices coming and going and the noise of traffic and all those odd, source-less noises that filled the streets in any town. He felt like something was about to break inside him. He didn't want to find himself weeping like a child in the street.

'''''''''''

His dorm room was a sanctuary after the uncertain experience of visiting the town. He felt in control again, as if his surroundings were closer to him, somehow more visible. He had touched every inch of this room and he could see it in his mind's eye. Perhaps what he saw was vastly different from the truth, but at least it was _something_ more than shadow and supposition.

'Will your roommate mind if I sit on his bed?' Tod asked, and Buz shook his head.

'Chet? No. Just don't move any of his things around. He hates that,' Buz said, although he could easily have said _we hate that_. It was a blessing to be living with someone who was just as sensitive to unexpected changes in surroundings as he was. Even though Chet had more sight than him, he was still thrown out by disorder.

He went to his small stack of records and picked them up, turning them over in his hands. He had taken Chet's suggestion and notched tiny grooves in the edge of the vinyl, hating to cut into the record but knowing he needed some way of telling the discs apart without putting each one on to play each time. When he was more fluent with Braille he would be able to put labels on them.

He found what he wanted and dropped the disc onto the turntable and let the music push out into the room. Celia had been right about music, how it took you and enveloped you and sent you into a private world. He didn't think he had ever appreciated it more.

'Say, why do you have lamps in here?' Tod asked suddenly, obviously looking around the room. 'I mean – '

'Because Chet can see some light, and he likes to have the lights on,' Buz replied immediately. Sometimes he stood with his hands above the light bulb, feeling the heat and wondering why his eyes or his brain refused to show him that light. 'Do you want coffee?' he asked.

'Oh, sure – but let me – ' Tod began.

'I've been learning to cook, remember?' Buz said, going over to the small kitchen area at the side of the room. 'Besides, it's only an electric kettle. For some reason they don't want us having gas flames in the rooms.'

'Gee, I wonder why not,' Tod said sardonically. 'Well, make me coffee, great chef – and it'd better impress or I won't be giving references.'

Buz laughed and went to fill the kettle and carefully measure out coffee grounds into the pot.

'So, tell me about your Celia,' Tod said, the bed springs creaking under him as he relaxed.

'She's not _my_ Celia,' Buz insisted.

He kept one hand on the handle of the kettle, feeling the slight vibration start up as the water began to heat. There was no need to feel it, but he liked to feel the hum and think of all the tiny bubbles beginning to form in the water.

'It's just a fling,' he said. 'Something casual. Something to make all this bearable.'

'Come on, Buz. I've heard you talk about her on the phone,' Tod insisted. 'You never stop talking about her. Celia showed me this. Celia's teaching me how to do that.'

'Well, she's my mentor, see,' Buz said, feeling the heat in the kettle really starting to take hold beneath his hand. 'I mean, I spend hours with her. I'm going to talk about her. It doesn't mean I'm hung up on her. How ridiculous would that be? A blind guy and blind girl getting together like that?'

There was a sense of unease prickling at his spine. He had the sense that he was lying, but he wasn't quite sure what he was lying about or who he was lying to.

The kettle finally boiled and he poured it into the coffee pot with great care, listening out at the pitch of the pouring water changing as the pot filled up. He set the coffee to brew and sat down in the old leather armchair near the turntable. He closed his eyes and thought of the feeling of Celia's delicate cheekbones and the line of her jaw, and the soft thickness of her hair as his fingers ran through it. He thought of her hands, thin and somehow fleeting, like a bird always ready to fly away, and wondered what her collarbones might feel like, and her ribs, and the softness of her breasts.

There was a confused knot of feeling somewhere between his ribs and his stomach and he didn't know what to make of it. He wanted to throw himself into her arms, to lie with her and be enveloped by her and held by her forever. He wanted to run and run until he was so far away he wouldn't even hear her shout. He didn't know what to do with his feelings, how to unfold them and pick through them and work out what they meant. He was in an alien land and he could barely speak the language, let alone learn how to love the natives.

'Anyway, she knows it's nothing serious,' he said abruptly, getting up to pour the coffee. 'It's just a few dates, that's all. Nothing to get tangled up in. I mean, is it really surprising that we have things in common? She knows how I'm feeling. She's been through it. She knows what it's like to suddenly have your world turned upside down. To – to have day turned into night and all your future twisted into something you never imagined. She digs how I feel, see, and I guess I dig her too. Is that really so surprising?'

'No, it's not,' Tod said quietly, coming to take the cup from his hand. 'But you're hiding from it, Buz. You're not telling yourself the truth. Maybe she thinks it's nothing serious – but from where I'm standing you're already tangled up so deep that you haven't got a hope of escaping.'

'Look, let's just drop it, Tod,' Buz said abruptly.

As he spoke the record ended in silence and crackles and he moved over to the player to flip the disc over to the other side. He lowered the arm delicately and stood back to let the music play.

'All right,' Tod said slowly. 'All right. Tell me about something else. You're learning Braille, aren't you? How's that going?'

'Yeah, I'm learning. Getting on pretty good,' Buz nodded. 'Here,' he said, fetching a little leather portfolio and slipping a card out of it. He passed it over to Tod, slipping his fingers over the texture of it as he let go. 'This is one of the practise cards. David says I have _fine touch_. It's slow going, but I'm getting there.'

Tod laughed shortly. 'If you can really read that I'm in awe you,' he said honestly. 'It's just a lot of dots to me, to look at, let alone to feel. Here.'

He passed the card back to Buz and he touched his fingers to it, seeking out familiar formations and combinations as if he were reading a map. He had been told to practice, but he wasn't even sure what this was. Sometimes it felt as if he were reading a moth-eaten old parchment, with some letters obscured or lost forever to time. It would come clear. Celia had promised him that. But it took so much _time._ He had always been a quick learner, and it was frustrating to have to work so hard at reading just a few words.

He put the card away and sipped his coffee and thought of sitting with Celia in the evening while she read to him and then passed the book around for him to try. Their fingers always fumbled at the changeover, and he was never sure if it were deliberate or not. He liked the feel of her fingers. Her hands were always cold, smaller than his and seemingly fragile. He could close her hand in his completely and feel his warmth seep into her skin.

He didn't know what to make of her. He was sure she wasn't the type of girl he'd pick out of a line up. She felt light and brittle as spun sugar, but there was an unexpected warmth that came from her, an acerbic humour that reminded him of Tod, a bravery and a willingness to try that seemed to light a path in front of him wherever they walked. He wondered sometimes why she was still in this place, stagnating with him. She seemed so capable, so complete in her ability to handle the world. If she were a bird he would have opened his hands and held her up to the sky and waited for her to fly away – but like all beautiful things, he didn't want to watch her go.

He realised as the silence in the room was wreathed through by the music that part of him was waiting for Tod to go. He wanted to talk to Celia, to explain how he had felt today on his first trip away from the Camp, to tell her about the anger and the fear that had been sparking in him and threatening to explode all day. He knew she would be able to smooth through those feelings and sort them out and tell them it was all right to feel that way. She would help him to feel better. But that reliance on her disturbed and scared him. Wasn't he here to learn to look after himself? To be independent? And what kind of life could he have tied up with a girl who was just as blind as him? What kind of future would that be? It was wrong. It was all just so wrong. It was wrong even to think about being tied up with her. She must have mentored dozens of guys and he was just another in the line. He would move on and she would take another's hands as if they were at a country dance, and he would be forgotten. That was the best way to see it. Brief, intense fun. Nothing more.

'Ah, I'm sorry, Tod,' he said eventually, setting his empty cup down and turning toward his friend. 'I'm not being much company, am I?'

'I thought you'd forgotten I was here,' Tod laughed. 'It looked like there was a whole world going on in your head that I wasn't invited to. But that's okay.'

The silence fell again for a moment, and then Tod leaned closer and said, 'I just want you to do one thing for me, Buz, before I leave you here again. Tell me the truth about how you're doing. Is it getting easier?'

He shrugged. 'Yeah, it's getting easier. I mean, I can't pretend it's fun. It's like I said. I'm not a man for blindness. I – god, I miss freedom so much, Tod. Rolling down the road in that car. Running. Choosing left or right on a whim. Running up steps and walking out on my own and – _light._ It's such a simple thing, light, but I miss it so bad…'

'But you're doing all right?' Tod asked. His voice was soft with sympathy.

'I'm clawing my way out of the hole,' Buz nodded. 'Pushing back the boundaries. I'm never going to like this. I'm never going to stop waiting for the morning when I open my eyes and have to close the curtains because the sun's too bright. But it's getting easier.'

He breathed out hard. The record had ended again and there was a quiet static crackling through the room. He got up and switched the turntable off and put the record away carefully in its paper sleeve.

'You finished your coffee?' he asked, reaching out an open hand.

'Yeah, sure,' Tod said, handing him the empty cup.

Buz took it and returned it to the kitchen area with his own, washing them out and leaving them to dry.

'Come on,' he said, fetching the cane from the corner and picking up his jacket from the back of the door. 'Let me show you around this place. There's some people I'd like you to meet.'

''''''''''''''''

He lay in bed after Tod had gone with the blankets hunched up to his shoulders and his eyes closed. That way he could pretend that the dark was just the dark of night, not a pervading dark that lived inside his brain. He had ended the evening with just enough whiskey to make his bones feel soft and his chest feel warm, and Tod had left him with a rare hug and promises again to write and call.

It had been a strange day. It had been an odd throwback to Buz's previous life, entangled with this new path that he was set on. Thoughts churned through his head. The noises and sensations of the day, the imagined scenes of the diner and the streets through which he had walked. He couldn't help but make up pictures to go with where he had been, no matter how wrong they might be.

He listened to the regular noise of Chet breathing in his bed nearby. It was the sound of a man – he couldn't deny that – but he let himself imagine that it was Celia breathing. He thought of her lying in her bed in her own room, small and alone. He thought that she would be lost in a normal size bed. That was something strange and rather beautiful about this blindness. It gave his imagination scope. He saw her as a figure from the Princess and the Pea, a delicate body atop a teetering mass of mattresses. It would be nice to be able to share that space – not for anything as carnal as sex, but just for the comfort of being two bodies tight in one space, holding each other against the darkness.

He turned in his own bed, shutting his eyes more tightly and pulling the blankets up further. He was an idiot. A sentimental idiot. He shouldn't let himself think of her like that. There was nowhere for them to go, no place for two blind people to make it in the world together. He needed to finish this training and forget about Celia and move on. Nothing good could be forged in this furnace of black emotion. Nothing permanent. Moving on was his thing.


	4. Afterward

Afterward

When sight came, it was as sudden and startling as a biblical revelation. He returned from the lake shivering, clutching Celia in her drenched clothes, staring at everything around him. He found, strangely, that he couldn't find his way back to the dorms unless he closed his eyes for a moment and thought about the sounds and scents and the feel of the ground beneath his feet. Celia guided him home as much as he guided her.

It took him an hour to realise that this sudden influx of light meant that this was no longer his home. He had no place here any more. The joy that had sparked up in his heart began to settle and mingle with a strange sense of loss. He sat in his room in pyjamas and a dressing gown, trying to recover some warmth while the doctor bent over him and flashed light into his eyes and had him read letters off a card, and spoke to him irreverently about the foolishness of getting his sight back by trying to give himself pneumonia. He felt as if he were in shock. He should have been laughing and all he wanted to do was cry until his ribs broke apart.

'Celia,' he asked for the fifth time. 'How's Celia?'

'Celia's fine,' the doctor assured him. 'The nurse is taking care of her. A good night's sleep will set her right.'

'I should never have said anything,' he murmured. 'I shouldn't have said it.'

The doctor ignored him, slipping a stethoscope beneath Buz's pyjama top and pressing it to his chest and saying, 'Now breathe in and out. And again.'

He breathed and felt warmth beginning to tingle in his fingertips and creep back into his toes. He stared at the new world around him and thought of his first sight of Celia, clutched in his arms, half-drowned, dripping, shuddering with cold. He had found a kitten like that once, shivering at the side of the Hudson. It was a tiny thing only half in life, trying to claw out of the sack it had been dumped in. He had brought it back to the orphan asylum, but it had been taken away by the matron. He could still see its thin, desperate face, and he thought now of Celia's face, blank and washed through with grief.

'She'll be all right?' he asked again.

'A good night's sleep will set her right,' the doctor repeated, as if it were a line he had learnt long ago. 'And I'll say the same for you. Hot drinks and sleep. I'll see you again in the morning.'

'All right,' he murmured, staring at the room in front of him, at the television that he had listened to programmes on and his stack of records by the player and those table lamps blazing out light that he had only been able to feel until now. 'All right.'

'Congratulations, Mr Murdock,' the doctor said before he left the room, and Buz smiled absently at him, caught up in a hurricane of thought and feeling. He needed to sleep. He needed something to untangle the shock and joy and heartbreak inside him.

'''''''''''

Saying goodbye to Celia was a strange thing. Looking into her eyes, eyes that were as blind as his had been, and wondering what was passing in her mind. She was as much like a bird as he had imagined her, as delicately formed, looking as if she were waiting to take off. Her movements made him think of a sparrow on the ground, looking for food. He wanted to put his hands to her face and lay his fingers over her eyes and remove whatever scales were there to set her free.

'There isn't any chance of that, Buz,' she told him prosaically. 'It's not like your blindness. There never was a chance. I accepted that long ago. But you – you've got your whole future ahead of you now. The future you'd always thought you'd have.'

'And what about you?' he asked, touching a finger to her cheekbone and _seeing_ her cheekbone all at once. It seemed like a miracle to be able to do that.

'Oh, I'm making plans,' she said enigmatically. Her smile made him think of icons in churches, secret and knowing. 'Don't imagine I don't have a future. I do, and it's just as wide and exciting as yours.'

'Do you plan on telling me about your plans?' he asked, and she smiled again, shaking her head.

'Not until I'm certain,' she said.

He nodded and left it at that. There was no point in trying to prise secrets from Celia. She could hold onto them like an oyster with a pearl inside.

He sat and looked at her, drinking in the lines of her face and the clearness of her eyes and her short, unstyled hair that somehow made him think of feathers. She looked just how he had imagined and nothing like he had imagined. Sometimes he had visualised her looking like a bird in a tree or a dancer on a stage. He had thought of nothing quite as real and endearing as this. He knew that she was as strong as an arc of steel, but she looked so small and fragile that he wanted to put his arm about her and protect her from the world.

'It's going to kill me to leave you behind, baby,' he said, tracing her cheek again with his fingers. 'All those things I said by the lake. I was – I don't know – trying to push you away before we both got hurt too bad. I didn't know what was going on in my own head. It was just too much, you know. I didn't know how to _deal_ with all those things. I felt like I was drowning.'

She patted his hand. That gesture had become so familiar to him, but now he saw her do it, her fingers thin and fleeting. He could see something behind the veil of her skin – some kind of pain that seemed to illuminate her body – and there was nothing he could do to ease it.

'You get restless, Buz,' she said, her words soft and gentle over the pain that he could see was there. 'I understand. I know that you need to move on. But – write to me, won't you? Tell me about all the places you see.'

He smiled. 'I'll find places to borrow a brailler, just to write letters to you,' he promised. 'They'll be _your_ letters, private. You won't need anyone to read them to you.'

'I'll keep them in here,' she said, touching her hand to her chest. 'They'll be – '

Her voice faltered and he saw tears suddenly spill onto her cheeks and his heart seemed to break.

'Baby, don't cry,' he urged her, wiping those tears off with his fingertips. 'Hey, don't cry.'

He leant forward, cupping a hand behind her head and drawing her forward, touching his lips to hers and closing his eyes and losing himself in her, tasting the salt on his tongue as her tears ran down onto her lips.

'I think I'm gonna miss you like crazy,' he murmured, keeping his eyes closed, letting his hands explore the feel of her one last time. Something melted inside him and he knew that his tears were mingling with hers. He pushed his arms around her and held her so tightly that he was afraid he might break her.

'You need to go,' she said eventually. 'You need to pack and – '

'Yeah, my buddy Tod's coming in the morning,' he said with his head against hers and his eyes still closed. He wondered if he could sweep her up with him and take her along. She was small enough to fit between him and Tod in the Corvette. But there were just some things in life that were never going to happen. That was him and Celia. They had drifted for a time down the same stream and now the currents were dividing. He would have to leave her behind.

''''''''''

He found himself crying again as Tod drove the Corvette down that long winding drive away from the camp. He bit his lip into his mouth and wiped his hands over his face, feeling the cold of the moving air evaporating his tears away. Despite the awful reason for his being there, he had grown to love that place and those people as if it was his one true home and family. And there was Celia at the centre of it all, a slim, self-contained figure in her tightly buttoned coat, being left behind and alone.

'You all right, buddy?' Tod asked, snatching a look sideways at him as he took the turning onto the main road.

'Yeah,' he said, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyes again and then letting the light flood back as he pulled them away. 'I'll be all right. It's just – strange – you know.'

'I can imagine,' Tod said. The road was straight and level before them. He took a little longer to look sideways at his friend. 'You _were_ hung on up her,' he said quietly.

'Yeah,' Buz said, wiping a hand across his cheek again and thinking of Celia's pale, still face as they had driven away. 'Yeah, I was more than hung up. I think she had a net around my heart.'


End file.
